Peckish

I'm speaking of my own experience here - When I first got my longarm, I had a hard time because I was so good at piecing and I sucked at quilting. It's hard to like doing something you're not good at. The 15-minute thing is a great idea. I decided to try my hand at pantos. It's working! I'm happy with my quilting, I'm getting more familiar with how my machine moves and sounds and behaves. Small successes build into confidence, increased skills, and feeling good. When you feel good about doing something, you want to do more of it, which builds into even more confidence and increased skills. So find a way to be successful at your quilting, whether it be 15 minute practice sessions, or pantos, or something else, and you'll grow.

tranum

I like to FMQ two 10-12” fabric squares sandwiched with layers of flannel for practice. I cut them smaller & bind them into potholders & donate to a place that helps people get set up with household items in an apartment and get on with a better life life.

Mazo

I’ve been following this post as I aspire to one day tackle FMQ. So here’s my dumb question because I try to be cheapish and I’m also curious. Would doodling on paper count towards practice? I’m imagining just knowing where you want to go is part of the skill. It would be the brain exercise. No doubt that practicing with the real thing also makes you better.

LAF2019

yes, absolutely it does. I bought a couple of small-ish sketch books off amazon, and it helps to inspire me when I look a quilt and can't decide what to do, or to remember different designs. you'll practice not just the design itself, but the spacing between the designs, your travel path, transitioning between designs, etc.

SusieQOH

Mazo- Lori Kennedy is a quilter who swears by doodling. She has several books, a blog, and Bluprint classes.

Watson

Some people swear by doodling, yet it doesn't help me at all. I am very much "move the fabric" kind of person. Maybe if you are using a long arm, doodling helps more because it is the same movement...you are moving the "pen" and the fabric is staying stationary.
But again, some people swear by it, so try it yourself.

I also wanted to say to set the speed of your machine at whatever speed you are comfortable with, so you don't have to worry about both your foot pedal speed and hand speed at the same time while you're practicing. Just put your foot flat down on the pedal and it will only go as fast as you have it set.

Watson

Stitchnripper

I am another one who isn’t helped by doodling. To me they are different things - from moving a pen on paper to moving a quilt through a machine. My machine doesn’t have a speed control but I am pretty good at controlling its speed.

Iceblossom

Doodling does help me both at the long arm and when I'm sitting down, if by nothing else as becoming more familiar and learning the best/easiest way to do things. I'm usually a left to right sort of person, but sometimes the quilting just works out better going the other direction. Likewise, I prefer to work from the top down but sometimes I get better results going the other way. As I mentioned before I often draw out my designs on parchment paper and then sew through them. I can tell you by the time I'm done tracing the design more than once, I'm improved by knowing exactly how to do the motions, first it's up here and over there and down and around and -- watch that curve there, you have problems with that.

As a musician I was trained to have muscle memory so that when our brain/memorization fails us we can rely on the fingers knowing what to do in what order. I believe that our sewing/quilting is indeed a physical activity that requires hand/eye/motor coordination.

SusieQOH

I'm so glad I brought this subject up. Thanks to all of you! I really want to be a FM quilter!!!

Peckish

I think doodling is more for those who have longarms, not people who quilt on their DSMs.